In the prior art, in order to answer callers' problems, call takers must navigate through knowledge documents and follow documented procedures, during which time the callers are asked a series of questions. In such systems, after the problem is resolved or needs to be escalated to a higher level of support, the problem is documented in a problem management/ticketing system (such as, for example. commercial Peregrine and Remedy systems).
There presently does not exist a way to automatically track diagnostic steps and immediately transcribe the results into a ticketing or other recording system without a user having to independently spell out the details of the diagnostic steps taken. In addition, when a user describes their problem through an explicit or implicit search interface (either to a call taker, or in the context of self-help) to the self-help system, and when either the call taker or the user is taken to a knowledge document to resolve the problem, there presently does not exist a way to bypass questions in the knowledge document that are implicitly answered by the problem description/search query.
Accordingly, the present invention addresses one or more deficiencies of the prior art.